1975 Plymouth Road Runner

Quick history: Plymouth's Road Runner was produced between 1968 and 1980. Chrysler's Plymouth division already had a performance car in the GTX model , but their designers decided to go back to the drawing board and reincarnate the original muscle car concept. Plymouth wanted a car able to run 14-second times in the 1/4 mile,  and sell for less than $3000. ( Back THEN, of course...) Both goals were met, and the low-cost muscle car hit the street. Road Runner's success would eventually far outpace the upscale and lower volume Plymouth GTX model of which it was often confused.

Fast fowarding to the 1975 model, it  was based on the newly restyled and more formal-looking B-body platform which was now called the Plymouth Fury ( The former full-sized Fury was now being called a "Plymouth Gran Fury"...keeping up with me? ). The Plymouth Road Runner came with a blacked out grille and a special stripe treatment to distance it from the regular Fury model . The 318 V8 was the standard engine, but now had just a single exhaust. The 220 hp 360 V8 and the 230 hp 400 V8 ( which still carried a 4 barrel carb and dual exhausts), were also available. A magazine test of a 1975 Road Runner with the 400 engine had a 0-60 time of 8.1 seconds, and its 1/4 mile times were in the solid 16-second range. Even though it was just a shadow of the former 1970 times, this was at least respectable for the day . Plymouth's most powerful 440 V8  was restricted to police models, but it HAS been rumoured that a few 1975 Plymouth Road Runners were built (through a special factory order) with the 240 hp police spec 440, along with the police spec suspension and wider 7" rims. Only 7,183 Road Runners were built in 1975, and just over 50%  had  the 318 V8 engine.

Though the name of the car the Road Runner was based on changed from Belvedere to Satellite to Fury, the Road Runner always remained a B-body through 1975. While the Road Runner name was planned to be on a B-body in Plymouth's dealer brouchures  for the 1976 model year, the name was transferred to an optional appearance package for the all-new Plymouth Volare' based model.

On a personal sidenote, it's funny how one's taste can change throughout the years. I used to look at this model year Road Runner with disappointment. That Plymouth (in my opinion), had ruined what was in my mind one of the ultimate Mopar muscle cars. Today, due to the fact that car designs have taken a cosmic hard left throughout the years, (some are still cool...while others...wellllll, not so much...), and given the scarcity of seeing a 1975 Plymouth Road Runner ANYWHERE lately...I see them in a totally different light. I dare say that they are very cool. But, hey..that's just me...